It has been a little over five years since the original Bioshock took gamers to the underwater dystopia of Rapture. The revolutionary first-person shooter was not only critically acclaimed but graphically stunning at the time. In addition to the PC specs, Irrational Games also revealed a few more details including control options.

The PC version of Bioshock Infinite lets players remap all default action bindings for their keyboard and mice allowing for primary and alternate bindings simultaneously. Keeping high-end gaming mice in mind, no artificial mouse smoothing will be applied and the ability to adjust sensitivity and acceleration will be present.

Players who prefer to use a console controller will also have a wealth of options. Default, Marksman, and Retro are the three controller layouts available and each will support configuration options. Things like aim assist, vibration, and look inversion can be adjusted to preference. Irrational has also taken into account players who are left-handed or use special controllers for medical reasons. Those players can move and aim with different configurations or even swap stick movements with the D-pad.

Bioshock Infinite will use “horizontal plus” widescreen support to adjust for large monitors. Aspect ratio, resolution, and display mode will help make further adjustments. Irrational has made sure that a wide range of players can experience Bioshock Infinite regardless of their gaming rigs by offering several graphics presets. Presets range from “very low” to “ultra” along with custom configurations.

Though Bioshock Infinite requires DirectX 10 compatible hardware, it is a DirectX 11 game. Some graphics settings are only available with the DX 11 cards. For powerful enough PCs, contact-hardening dynamic shadows, diffusion depth of field, high definition ambient occlusion, and even optimized anti-aliasing will be available. The game will even ship with full-resolution textures straight out of the box (though Irrational says a three DVD install makes it possible).

The studio also wants to make sure Bioshock Infinite is available wherever a player goes. Not only does this mean trying to scale performance and visuals for setups with integrated graphics but also incorporating features used in Steam. The game will feature Steam Cloud support, allowing saves to transfer wherever players have an account. Bioshock Infinite even supports Steam’s Big Picture mode so the PC experience can be moved to big screen televisions.

As for the minimum PC requirements, players will need to have Windows Vista Service Pack 2 32-bit (no Windows XP to be found here). An Intel Core 2 DUO 2.4 GHz/AMD Athlon X2 2.7 GHz processor with at least 2 GB of memory is needed along with 20 GB of free space on the hard drive. Video cards need a minimum of 512 MB of memory and should be Direct X10 compatible ATI Radeon HD 3870/NVIDIA 8800 GT/Intel HD 3000 Integrated Graphics cards. A DirectX compatible sound card is also required for both minimum and recommended specs.

With these recommended settings, Bioshock Inifinite will likely impress as the original did. The game releases on PC (and PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360) on March 26, giving PC gamers plenty of time to update their rigs. How many out there are buying new cards in anticipation of Bioshock Infinite? Leave your comments below.

Ben Sheene

Ben is from Kentucky where he originally began playing games (an activity he still continues to this day). With a love for writing he graduated from Centre College with a BA in English. He recently moved to California to pursue whatever future endeavors were there. A passion for music, gaming, blogging, and existing keeps him up at night and crafts him into the person he is today.